What If?
by momoxtoshiro
Summary: ...'Happily ever after' did not exist. Not to her anyway... Why would he not come back to tear her heart out? She deserved that much at least... SasuSaku, My last fic of 2008. Dedicated to Sasukez, my cousin. WARNING!:EXTREMELY EMO!


**Note to Sasukez: I know I was supposed to write you a different SasuSaku fic, but this just came to me after I saw that video...so, you may have to wait a bit longer for that other fic but be patient please! Here is something to satisfy you until then! (I hope...).**

**My 2nd Naruto fic on this account! The other is Cherry Blossom's SpringField and there is also one on my sister's BakaKonekoRKL's account, Don't Mess With Squad 7! Believe It! Cha! (If you could not tell by the title that its crack, there may be something wrong with you XD). Enjoy!**

**I do not own Naruto. Songfic song by Kate Winslet, it is amazing.**

* * *

What If…?

The harsh wind blew again, tugging back the hair of the kunoichi and the one she used to, still did, and always will love.

She had asked him to stay, she had offered to go with him, she had threatened to give him away, she had devoted herself to him, she had sworn herself to him, no matter what; but it still was not enough.

Even after hearing that she would give her life for him, and confessing her undying love for him, it still was not enough.

Sakura Haruno cried out to him again and again, trying to break through his hard outer shell and reach the person trapped inside, but the barrier remained strong, determined to keep her shut away from the lonely boy she knew was really ensnared. But the only thing she was privileged to see of this captivating boy was his back as he stood several feet ahead of her, still as a concrete statue.

Tears streamed down her face, choking her and blurring her vision and her image of him; perhaps the last image of him she would ever see.

Her heart pounded painfully in her chest as she watched him, standing there, so close yet so far. If she reached out to him, she could stop him, but she might also push him away.

Her mind flashed back to the earliest memories she had of him, when they were very young and when they were chosen to be on the same squad. She relived the joy she had felt then for a split second before it was gone. She remembered all of their trials and missions and the Forest Of Death, how she had taken care of him and worried terribly for him.

Back then, he had never shown any intentions of wanting to leave, but recently he had, and now he was. Sakura strained to remember when he had decided to go, to leave the place he was born, with all his friends and to run off to a foreign land with troubles he could never anticipate and people he could never trust.

Sasuke was still a moment longer, and the pain in Sakura's heart eased the slightest bit at the thought that he might change his mind still.

It was cruel to give her hope, and to make her believe for one second, that he was contemplating to stay, that he would turn around and go back home and never dream of leaving again.

It was so cruel to make her think he considered staying, especially when those hopes were crushed into powder.

And suddenly he was gone, but then she felt his presence behind her.

And he thanked her for everything, but she knew deep down that he did not mean a word.

And then, there was a dull pain, and nothing more.

_**Here I stand alone with this weight upon my heart, **_

_**And it will not go away**_

_**In my head I keep on looking back**_

_**Right back to the start**_

_**Wondering what it was that made you change**_

She woke up alone on the bench, dried tears streaming her face and the taste of salt on her tongue.

She sat up immediately and wanted to cry out like a child, she wanted to wail to the moon like a wolf abandoned by its pack.

Everything.

Everything she had ever known, everything she had ever lived for, everything she had ever loved, was gone.

And she could not even do anything to try and stop it.

She broke down and burst into tears, the sobs coming violently as she hunched over her stomach, felling as though she were going to be sick.

All along, ever since she had first laid eyes on the Uchiha boy, she had known automatically that there was something there, something separating her from him. She saw it as a line, an obstacle that blocked her from finding her true love and happiness, as every girl desires. It was a line that had to be crossed, that split them apart. She knew that he would never dream of crossing it, so she told herself that she was the one who had to do so.

So, believing that crossing this invisible line would lead her to love, she tried to impress him, but after realizing that did not succeed, she tried being stronger.

Sometimes, a boy likes his girl to be a little weak sometimes, so he can protect her; that is why he is there.

But Sasuke was obviously not that type of boy. Weakness in his eyes was a flaw that meant a useless burden, which was what she was.

Was she that unimportant?

That insignificant?

So she began training with the Hokage, to become stronger and less of an annoying burden to him.

She had tried her very best for him, but somewhere along the way, she had drawn a line of her own to separate the two of them. She had pushed herself so hard that she had made an impassible boundary between them that she had no knowledge of. She had reached the point where she had simply tried too hard so she made a border between them, and the closer she got to him, the stronger it would become, and the further it would push her away from him. Her body drew this line for her own good, because it could not handle the stress of trying to be noticed by him.

Yet she still tried all these things to make him notice her, but it still was not enough.

Everything she did, everything she had tried to succeed in, everything she had tried to give him, none of it was enough.

It was never enough.

And it never would be.

_**Well I tried but I had to draw the line**_

_**And still this question keeps on spinning in my mind…**_

Sakura knew she cried for hours, years, maybe even eons…she could not keep track of time.

It did not matter anymore anyway.

Nothing mattered anymore.

Regret and grief and sorrow weighed her down and did not allow her to stand for some time.

She just could not believe it. The one she loved, the one she had grown up loving and had taught her how to love was gone. He taught her the happiness of being in love and made her long for the bliss of having him love her back.

But in teaching her how to love, he also taught her loss, heartache, and a suffering unlike any other.

She had been happy at first, but now, she knew that she would never truly smile again.

The pain was just too overwhelming; it might as well have been an actual wound on her heart. It might as well have been a horrible wound that could never be healed that was perpetually bleeding her life out.

What was life worth without the one you loved anyway?

The wound would just bleed and bleed and never stop.

Sometimes, someone could come along and begin to mend that wound only to re-open it anew and let the fresh blood flow out all over again.

Now Sakura cursed herself for not asking something of him before he had left.

He had torn her heart out mentally and emotionally, but not physically.

So she should have asked him to tear it out of her chest for real before he left.

_**What if I had never let you go?**_

_**Would you be the man I used to know?**_

_**If I'd stayed**_

_**If you'd tried**_

_**If we could only turn back time…**_

_**But I guess, we'll never know…**_

Eventually, Sakura made her body move.

She forced it against its will to get up and walk slowly back to her house.

Every movement hurt her terribly, to be leaving behind this place, the last place she had ever seen her beloved. Her body longed to stay there, perhaps to relish the feeling of him being so close to her and thanking her, or perhaps to hope that he would turn around and come back.

But she walked away.

She turned her back on the rising sun that brought forth the new day. If this new day would bring her more suffering and pain than ever before, then she did not want to see it; she wanted nothing to do with it.

Her shadow followed her like a ghost, haunting her. Whenever she caught sight of the black shape from the corner of her eye, her mind would trick her into thinking it was Sasuke. Her mind wanted to believe it was him, and more than anything she wanted it to be him.

But it was not.

And it never would be.

She just was not good enough.

Not for him.

* * *

She sat alone in her room, staring at the wall.

Pictures were taped there, of all of her friends and of herself.

Her light emerald gaze traveled over pictures of everyone she knew. They came to rest upon one of Lee and she sighed as they moved onto one of Naruto. And she forced her eyes not to wander to the picture next to it.

Now, she wondered how things would be if they could go back in time; if she could have stopped him, or if she had fixed one little thing that had messed them up.

But even if she changed her whole self, would it be enough to win his love?

No.

The answer was final and certain.

Bitterness crept over her now, and she hated it, but it made her feel good at the same time.

No.

He would never show _anyone _love, let alone her.

Sasuke Uchiha had no feelings of love or affection, only hate and loathing. There was no such thing as 'love' to him. And obviously if there was, he hardly cared for it, if at all and wanted no part of it.

She stood up from her bed and reached out. She pulled off every picture that had…_him_ on it.

She wanted to rip them up, like he had ripped up her feelings and her soul. She wanted to tear them like he had torn her heart. She wanted to throw them away like he had thrown away her love and her being.

But she could not.

She just simply could not bring herself to do those things she so strongly desired to do.

Just because _he _threw _her_ memory away, it did not mean that _she _had to throw _his_ memory away.

So she packed them away inside an old book no one else knew about and she slid it under her mattress, so that maybe, when she slept, she would be allowed to dream of him.

_**Many roads to take**_

_**Some to joy, some to heartache**_

_**Anyone can lose their way**_

_**And if I said that we could turn it back**_

_**Right back to the start**_

_**Would you take the chance and make the change?**_

Sasuke Uchiha.

It was no longer a name; it was a curse.

A curse that had captured her and tortured her until there was nothing left but this bitter, hollow shell of a girl.

She had no soul anymore; she did not need it now.

She might as well be dead.

And she had no heart; he had taken that with him.

She could not even feel it beating anymore, and she knew it was gone, or it might as well have been.

She was nothing now, not that she had _ever_ amounted to much of anything.

She was alone, empty and bitter; she just went right back to the beginning. She had always envied the other girls for having boyfriends and she had never fully understood love until he had come along. And even then she did not fully understand it. She would only ever understand it when he loved her back, which was never happening.

Someone _else _could love her, and even if she loved them back, she would never truly be happy and she would never truly know love.

No matter how much she told herself that she hated him for leaving her, no matter how many times she told herself he was never coming back and she was never seeing him again, and no matter how well she knew he did not love her, she could not help it.

She wanted _him_.

No one else.

He was the only him, and no one else ever could be.

She told herself it was okay to hate him, and that she should despise him and just forget him altogether. But it was not as simple as that.

This hurt was something she had never known before and could never have imagined to feel. The feelings of loss and grief were far too great for one girl to handle alone.

But that was what she was.

Alone.

And now, she always would be, no matter what other people did.

The only one she would not be alone around was _him_, and he was not coming back.

And now as she thought there in her room, her head leaned back against the wall, she wondered where he was and what he was doing. Normally, she would have wished him to be happy and whole-heartedly mean it.

But, she had no heart anymore.

So now, she wished that he was happy, but she wished it with bitter remorse and detest. She wished that he were happy, wherever he was, for hurting her like he had. But he did not know the pain she had gone through.

The horrible, awful pain.

She wanted to make him feel guilty, but she knew, deep down, that he had nothing to feel guilty for.

He did not care about her; that was obvious.

He did not care about her feelings and her undying love.

Because even after all he had done to her, that is what her love was.

Undying.

And no matter how much she wanted to deny it, it was true and she knew it and she could not avoid it, despite everything she tried.

She knew he felt no regret in leaving her and everything he ever knew.

She just wanted him to feel guilt for hurting her.

But she also knew that once he had left, he had never taken a second glance over his shoulder.

She wanted him to consider how things could have been if he had stayed, not to stay with _her_ exactly, but just to stay in his homeland.

But she knew him far too well, and he did not care about what he had left behind.

Not the slightest bit.

And again, Sakura found herself longing for him to come back, not to stay, but just to tear her heart out, because she knew it was still there and she wanted it gone.

Why did he not tear it out when he had gone?

He should have.

She knew he would have liked to.

To see the annoying burden gone forever.

She wished he could see her now in her misery; he would love it.

Anything to make her suffer.

And she found herself thinking his name and mumbling it to herself.

Cursing herslef.

Why would he not come back to tear her heart out?

She deserved that much at least.

_**Do you think how it would have been sometimes?**_

_**Do you pray that I'd never left your side?**_

Crushed.

That was what she was.

Every single part of her.

She raised one hand to her chest but felt nothing.

Nothing was beating.

Somehow she knew she was not dead, but she wished she were.

Oh, how she wished she were.

The thought of ending her own life passed through her mind many, many times, but she had been taught that life should be cherished and you should not throw one away recklessly, especially not your own.

But now, she really did not care.

She had nothing left anyway.

There was nothing left to live for.

But she knew the only reason she did not put a knife to her throat was because she was a coward. She did not have the courage or the willpower to do that. She would just break down crying again.

Crying.

She was sick of it.

She was done with it.

Crying did not do anything, it just made her feel better about herself.

Once, when she was young, someone had told her that crying pushed the sad out of the body and washed away one's troubles.

But it was a lie.

Just like everything else in her life.

Crying was just what the body did when there was no other option.

She found herself thinking back to that morning and the previous night. She _should _have reached out to him, she _should _have gone after him, but something had stopped her and she hated whatever it was.

And yet she was thankful for it.

Maybe things were meant to work out this way; this was fate.

This was what destiny had chosen for her, this endless pain.

But she was thankful because she was able to let him go.

She thought that letting him go was a step towards forgetting him completely or at least accepting the fact that he was gone.

But now she realized the flaw.

She would _never _forget him, and she would _never _accept the fact that he was gone.

She wished that the wound on her heart would just bleed itself out and end her agony.

She wished that it would empty itself out and make her weightless, no longer a burden that just took up space and wasted oxygen.

Again, she thought back on the times she loved.

The memories hurt but the smallest smile ever tilted her lips upwards for a split second and then the tears fell again.

_**What if I had never let you go?**_

_**Would you be the man I used to know?**_

_**If I'd stayed**_

_**If you'd tried**_

_**If we could only turn back time…**_

_**But I guess, we'll never know…**_

She envied the others who all had found the loves of their lives.

To her, the world was divided into 'us' and 'them'. 'Us' being those of us like her, who never seemed to be able to find love, and 'them', the ones who had been lucky enough to find that person and to win against the others who loved them.

Sakura gazed out the window, the sun was bright but the light it shed on her was cold and numbing.

She always heard other people say things like 'Happy endings just take time', and for the longest time she had believed them.

But now she knew the truth.

She had always known the truth, but now she knew that it was certain.

'Happily ever after' did not exist.

Not to her anyway.

It was a lie they made up to make you feel good.

When people are born, their parents do not know if their child will be one of the lucky few who find a happy ending and true love, or turn out to be one of the outcasts that everyone rejects.

Sakura wanted to apologize to her parents for being a failure.

Love, happiness, joy, they meant nothing now.

She was sick of all those sappy stories with the endings everyone favors.

In _real _life, things hardly _ever_ turn out right.

There is always some sort of problem.

Life did not care about the little people like her. If _she_ was unhappy or suffering, the world shrugged and went on spinning without her.

It did not care.

Its people did not care.

Not about one, individual girl that was in anguish.

She did not matter to this world.

No individual person matters unless they are of high wealth or power.

No one would care if she were to die.

But she just did not have the courage to kill herself.

So instead, she stayed put, weeping in her room, feeling sorry for herself instead of getting up and doing something about it or trying to find a way to fix it.

Hopelessly hoping.

But there was nothing she could do about it, and there was no way she could ever hope to fix it.

The line that had separated him and her was now a canyon, gaping and hungry, waiting to draw one of them in.

And Sakura knew it would be her.

In fact, she might as well jump in.

No one cared.

_**If only we could turn the hands of time**_

_**If I could take it back, would you still be mine?**_

_**  
Cause I tried, but I had to draw the line**_

_**But still this question keeps on spinning in my mind…**_

Sakura shifted and pulled out the old book, opening the brown and folded pages.

The pictures of her beloved Sasuke fell into her lap.

She picked one of them up; it was their Team 7 picture with all four of them, students and sensei.

Her hands trembled, but her fingers curled around the corners. Her grip tightened as she stared down at him, the handsome boy she loved.

She was chained to him by invisible steel and could never let him go.

She was bound to him and she could not deny it.

Her nails dug into the paper, ripping it slightly.

She did not know if the tears were of anger or misery.

And she did not know if her grip tightened out of grief or hatred.

She just did not know anymore.

She felt so terribly lonely now.

Even if he had still been here, she would not be seeing him much, but now she was so incredibly lonely.

Perhaps it was because she knew she would not see him anymore, or perhaps because she was so confused and had given up on everything she had ever worked for and lived with.

She closed the old book delicately with the crumpled photos within its pages and placed it back under her mattress. Her feet made her stand but all they did was take her across the room to the window.

And as her feet moved, she was reminded by that moment when she had turned away and left without attempting to go after him.

Not that it would have done her any good if she had.

But she had walked away, and what has been done in the past can never be changed.

The past is set in stone, but she prayed and wished and longed so badly to be able to go back in time and restart things.

And if not restart them, she wanted to change many things.

And she would have made it so she had stopped him, no matter what it took.

And she would have made it so that she had never walked away.

Then, for the first time since that morning, she felt her heartbeat.

She sighed and just leaned over the open window sill, thinking about him, Sasuke Uchiha…

There was no way she could deny that she was madly in love with him and always had been and always will be.

Something changed inside Sakura at that moment.

Sasuke Uchiha.

The name was somehow no longer a curse.

It was the name of the person she loved and nothing could change that, not even time.

_**What if I had never let you go?**_

_**Would you be the man I used to know?**_

_****_

What if I had never walked away?

Cause I still love you more than I can say

A tiny, sad smile came across Sakura's lips then.

_**If I'd stayed**_

She decided something as she gazed out at the cherry blossom sky.

_**If you'd tried. **_

She looked in the direction of the place where he had left her.

_**If we could only turn back time…**_

She looked in the direction of where he had gone to; towards the setting sun.

_**But I guess, we'll never know…**_

And Sakura had a sudden change of heart.

She decided, no matter what anyone else said, or what happened, she would wait for her beloved Sasuke Uchiha.

Whether he would come back or she would have to go find him, it did not matter.

She would wait.

She would just have to wait and see what the rising sun and tomorrow's new day had in store for her.

How could she _ever _hate him?

How could she ever do anything _but _wait for him?

And although her smile was a sad one, it was still a smile.

She would wait.

**_We'll never know…_**

_

* * *

_

**A/N: Hope you liked it!**

**I know the ending kind of changed fast, sorry about that, I could not really think of a better way... This story was intended to be a suicide, but I just could not bring myself to do it. I mean its New Year's people! And I've never killed someone off before via suicide...not yet, as of since I posted this story. But I have one in mind...Bwuahahaha! ... Sorry...**

**Well I think it was pretty good for something I came up with on the spot and wrote in less than 3 hours at 8am after staying up until 4!**

**Happy New Year!!**

**And PLEASE review!!**


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